http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/897/bleachquincyarcherbybeatt1.jpg
while i'm not a huge fan of Ishida as a character, this is just beautiful

Well after getting some personal issues dealt with, I’ve finally gotten around to writing up my reviews. While One Piece did come out quite a bit sooner, I’ve just now gotten the time to sit down and pound through these and One Piece reviews take a good deal more time (this way I can get some sleep in between). The pics this week come from blood-scanlations’ newest release and the cover pic is a gift from beanclam (http://beanclam.deviantart.com/) over at deviantArt, so check out her other artwork in her gallery.

Crashing the Party

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GJ has a thing for only using cero at point blank range

We left off last week with Grimmjow breaking (quite literally) into Orihime’s room to Loli and Menoli’s surprise. Basically, he is there to utterly destroy them and he accomplishes that goal with flying colors. The start of the fight seems to further display the personalities of Loli and Menoli. Loli is WAY too cocky for her own good as evidenced once nearly every time we have seen her. She questions Aizen’s judgement as he invites Orihime to see Hougyoku, decides to beat the hell out of Aizen’s guest and Ulquiorra’s psychological experiment, and now she attacks Grimmjow in blind rage despite the fact that he is obviously much stronger than her. Menoli’s personality is more based around protecting Loli. Despite the fact that she is more aware of the dangers of Loli’s actions than Loli herself, she goes along and acts as lookout instead of stopping her friend in the first place. When Grimmjow kicks the overconfident Loli, Menoli reveals what is either an out-of-nowhere manifestation of a Gantenbien-like zanpakuto or the lamest arrancar release ever as she simply gets gauntlets to attack Grimmjow. We don’t get a chance to see what these gauntlets do as Grimmjow instantly kills the girl with a cero. Obviously, Grimmjow doesn’t have time to scold the kids and send them away as it is much faster to just kill them.

Loli’s Plea

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you could call this mercy for what Aizen might do later

After Menoli’s death, we get to see a bit of the reason why Loli feels she can get away with all the shit she has pulled, no matter how unfounded her reasoning is. She actually believes that Aizen cares about her wellbeing. As her attitude suggests, she likely pulled some minor rebellious acts in her early stages as an arrancar and noticed that Aizen didn’t scold her. While she may have misinterpreted that as her getting special treatment for being one of his direct servants, in all actuality, Aizen is simply a guy who does not let little things bother him and does not even consider her actions worth scolding or her life worth protecting. When she realizes that Grimmjow also has no concern for her life or any repercussions from Aizen, she tries to plead for her life unsuccessfully with Grimmjow, who kills her off-shot we can safely assume.

Returning a Favor

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no dirty thoughts

According to Grimmjow, killing the brats was his own form of repaying his debt to Orihime and also allows him to ask another favor of her. This brings up two big issues regarding Grimmjow’s character. The first and most obvious is that he apparently has some unknown objective that obviously does not fit into Ulquiorra’s plan and likely doesn’t fit into Aizen’s. There are lots of theories going around as I have seen on the boards such as healing Ichigo so that he can fight him himself. I personally believe that Grimmjow’s motive lies in screwing over Aizen, Tousen, Ulquiorra, or any combination of the three (I prefer to think Tousen, but believe it is Ulquiorra). Unlike Zaraki, Grimmjow isn’t driven to fight Ichigo by the need to test his power or even to simply fight a worthy opponent. While he does have some interest from Ichigo actually wounding him, he is mind is not a single track like the 11th squad captain. There is also the issue of Ichigo already fighting (and I believe eventually winning against) a higher level espada, making a Sexta Espada fight seem a bit lame.

The second reason Grimmjow’s words interest me is that he actually went through the trouble of repaying Orihime’s favor before asking another of her (even if his method of repayment was rather crude and forced). As she is the prisoner of the Espada, Grimmjow could have simply ordered her to do this task (as any other of her captors would have done), but instead he made sure to pay his debt first. Granted I don’t doubt that he would have still killed the brats even if he wasn’t worrying about the favor, but the fact that he even brought it up is very meaningful. He contrasts Ulquiorra in that while the Cuatro Espada is able to alter his mental strategies in a split second, Grimmjow goes into a task with a set objective that remains unchanged regardless of the circumstances (evidenced by his rash actions when sent to Earth with Yammy, Luppi, and Wanderweiss). He could not have thought of using the death of Orihime’s attackers to help deal with her in a split second. He had likely been looking for an opportunity to repay his debt for a while and simply found his chance now. This self restraint in terms of using people may lead to other good qualities to be revealed later. If he does turn good at some point though, he would most likely die soon after or something to remove him from the story as his personality matches Renji too closely.

We once again return to our triangle of confusion as Ishida looks down on Zaerapollo’s battlefield. Here we get a good idea of the level of thought the mad scientist put into his fraccion. Not a single one of them looks or sounds even half as bright as Demura from the Hueco Mundo entrance tunnel. I estimated last week that due to the number and nature of Zaerapollo’s fraccion as opposed to those of other Espada, these guys were significantly more stunted in strength. While that is likely true as well, the concept certainly applies to intelligence with them. This makes perfect sense coming from Zaerapollo as to him, victory comes from knowledge and using that knowledge to handicap his opponents. The fraccion are simply tools with which he collects first-hand data and uses them as shields. As their role in his fights calls for their deaths, it makes sense to keep them incredibly stupid so they don’t know what they are doing. Eventually we might see one or two pop out of the group who are intelligent enough to have wills of their own and will provide some challenge for either Zaerapollo or Ishida/Renji.

Archer’s Arrival

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i wonder who has the stronger prescription lenses

Standing above the troop of Octava fraccion, Ishida tries to maintain the cool entrance he started with (after all, appearance is very important to maintain for a Quincy). This gives rise to the first comic scene we have had in a while as Ishida tries to keep Peshe from ruining his moment. This fight, unlike Ichigo and Ishida’s Tres Cifras fights, will likely not have one of the friendly hollows playing a major factor, which means Dondochakka will likely be out of the running for a while as well. Anyways, Zaerapollo takes interest in the new arrival and after shutting up his minions, the two exchange words in an outwardly civil manner. After each learns the identity of the other, both change their attitudes similarly.

Suerte!!!

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he may be officially crazier than Mayuri

Just as Ishida feels lucky for facing a weaker Espada, Zaerapollo feels lucky for the chance to face and study a Quincy. However, that is where the similarities in their emotion changes end. Zaerapollo can be compared with Mayuri at an earlier age in that he is a mad scientist at the start of his career. Unlike Mayuri, he has yet to experience all of the beings he can study and so acts like a kid at Christmas when not only his first Bankai user but also his first Quincy both fall right into his lap. Ishida on the other hand keeps his head in the fight and goes straight for an attack as Zaerapollo’s excitement left a perfect opening. As for how I think this fight will go, Renji will remain in the background for a bit as Ishida tries to kill Zaerapollo. Unfortunately for Ishida, I’m betting on the fraccion acting as living shields for their leader. Eventually though, Renji will jump in and will pin Zaerapollo along with Ishida, forcing an arrancar release. At some point after that, Ishida’s ability to manipulate spirit particles will come into play to allow Renji to use Bankai (Ishida’s level of power isn’t able to penetrate the released state).

Overall

I’d have to say I liked the chapter despite some minor complaints. While the situation with Grimmjow and Orihime is still pretty damn vague, it was pretty cool seeing Grimmjow blast Menoli with the cero just to avoid wasting time. In regards to Ishida/Zaerapollo, I liked the dialogue and the setup for the next chapter, so my only real issue is just that I’m a bit ticked that Ishida is getting another big fight while Chad is denied. I also would have liked to see what’s going on with Ichigo, but I guess Kubo wants to both keep us in suspense as to what will happen (hopefully a good sign of real creativity) and also wants to get Zaerapollo killed off before reviving Ichigo to kill Ulquiorra.

Luckas

April 28, 2007, 12:37 PM

Good review, the part about Grimjow is very interesting and I like the comparison between Zearpollo and Mayuri.

Stone

April 29, 2007, 03:05 AM

Thx for the review, I was wondering what picture from the hollow helpers scene you'd pick... I thought it might be the one pointing fingers.

About Aizen in comment "loli's plea" I agree, he dosn't really care for the small stuff spc if you have a reason. So depending on what Grimm Chose he might go unpunished this time.

I think your right about the Hollow helpers going to be living Shields, would be interesting and go well with how the chapter ended.

Serpent

April 29, 2007, 05:25 AM

Good review, a pleasure to read it as always.
Loved the pwnage of those brats , they got what they deserved, I really hope Grimmjaw doesn't take Orihime to heal Ichigo (but it looks like thats gonna happen next ) , i've gotta say i really liked Ishida this chapter and I hope he's gonna beat Zaerpollo on his own (but that's not gonna happen).
Something you didn't mention sahugani is the fact that Ishida went all out on this attack, if you look closely(pg19 top right) hes using Seele Schneider, so i think Zaerpollo is gonna take some serious damage.

sahugani

April 29, 2007, 03:31 PM

sorry for being late to reply to comments. i ended up locked out of my room overnight (same reason my OP review has been put of again).

thanks for the comments first of all. @stone - i'm pretty damn sure Grimmjow will go unpunished. in fact i wouldn't doubt that Aizen had already figured out what Grimmjow would do beforehand and taken measures so it would be no cause for worry. @serpent - i actually did notice the Seele Schneider, but it was kinda late and i forgot to mention it. that is one more reason Renji has to be the one to deal the finishing blow. He needs the spotlight more than Ishida anyways

Silhouette

May 04, 2007, 05:31 AM

Thanks for the review, I enjoyed reading it

I’m a bit ticked that Ishida is getting another big fight while Chad is denied

So am I, but to be honest started to like Ishida more than before. In the SS arc, Ishida joined Ichigo to prove that a Quincy is superior to a shinigami but now Ishida shows loyalty and joins because a friend is in need and the fact that he changed his course to help Renji despite sensing an espada's reiatsu is really admirable. But there is no excuse to make Chad lose so soon again espacially that he has shown more noble acts than Ishida...heck it's enough that he was brave and loyal enough to join Ichigo against SS despite being too weak in the beginning of the story. I want Chad to shine darn it and I want him to train under yoruichi but this is a different story.